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Report: CHCOs left out of agency decisions

The fragmented community of agency human-capital professionals is too often left
out of important agency decisions, according to a new report from the Government
Accountability Office.

GAO auditors found human-capital workers lack opportunities to communicate with
each other and coordinate across agencies. The report also noted a lack of support
from the Office of Personnel Management.

Create more agile talent-management processes to address inflexibilities in
the current system.

CHCOs need 'out-of-the-box' solutions

GAO also looked at how agencies are managing their workforces while dealing with
flat or declining budgets. The survey revealed three common struggles within the
human-capital community, for which GAO urged "out-of-the-box" strategies to
address.

GAO found disorganization within the human-capital community and a lack of a
"whole-government" perspective.

"The federal human-capital community is highly fragmented, with multiple actors
both inside and outside of government informing and executing personnel policies
and initiatives in ways that are not always aligned with broader, governmentwide
human capital efforts," the report stated.

One effect of the poor coordination is an inability on the part of CHCOs to inform
budget and legislative decisions that affect the workforce, according to GAO.

GAO suggested working and communicating with OPM to provide better information to
Congress and the Office of Management and Budget about budget issues. The report
also suggested regularly inviting input from others in the human-capital community
for their perspective.

But CHCOs in the 2013 audit shared that this did not always happen. When the
human-capital community is excluded from deliberations, "then agency decisions may
not be fully informed by important data on whether the agency has the necessary
skills, how it will obtain these skills, how long the skills will be needed, and
how much it will cost to meet program goals," the report stated.

To successfully complete their missions, agencies must work with their human
capital staff to prioritize and create a strategic plan for addressing personnel
issues, auditors said.

GAO also suggested agencies take more initiative toward enterprise services.
Agencies struggle with many of the same human-capital problems, yet there is
little effort to find cross-agency solutions. Instead, agencies, too often,
attempt to fix the issues independently. GAO suggested cross-agency collaboration
to address human-resource information technology and strategic-workforce planning.

Finally, GAO recommended agencies improve their talent management tools to better
evaluate the skills already within an agency and how workers with certain skills
can be best placed.

OPM offers agencies many human-capital tools, including workforce-planning models
and guidance. However, GAO found CHCOs were unaware of or were displeased with
OPM's help.

GAO concluded OPM must communicate with agencies and tailor their programs to meet
agencies' needs.